After the Bombs
by VampirePam
Summary: Slight AU for "Hounds of Baskerville," in which the drugs Sherlock used to dose John trigger a severe episode of PTSD.  When terrors old and new cause John to fall apart, Sherlock must rectify his mistake and pick up the pieces.
1. Chapter 1

It starts with the siren. True, the blinding white light is an assault to his senses, but it is the siren which truly takes him back.

_Ten_. John begins his mental countdown the way his therapist taught him as he runs for the nearest access pad._ Breathe, damn it, just breathe. _

_Nine. _ The words "ACCESS DENIED" pop onto the screen in angry, red letters. It's no good, his breathing is shallow and hurried now.

_Eight. _He frantically rams the card through several more times. Access is still denied. _Come on, come on. _

_Seven. _ The siren stops, and silence falls. _You can stop counting now, Johnny boy, it's over. _His racing heartbeat seems to believe otherwise.

_Six. _The lab is quiet now, and dark. The only sounds are his own ragged breathing and the skittering of the few animals left in their cages. It's almost worse.

_Five. The bars of one cage have been pried open. _Another small voice begins to whisper, _Get out, John, get out, _in an ever crescendoing loop_. _He runs to the second door. ACCESS DENIED.

_Four. _He flips open the cell phone, even though his fingers don't want to work quite right. _Ring. _ _ Ring. _ _Come on, Sherlock, pick up. Ring. Ring. _

_Three. _The second the ringing ends, he hears it - the growl that sends an icy chill through his blood and starts his entire body trembling.

_Two. _He clamps a hand over his mouth to stifle the scream that is threatening to escape. _Please, no, God, no. _He runs.

_One. _The cage door slams shut, and John isn't sure which shadows are terrifying him more - the ones passing frighteningly in front of his eyes or the ones returning with a vengeance from beneath the Afghan sand.

_Zero. _The images don't go away the way his therapist promised they would. "I'm safe,"she told him to tell himself. _But I'm not. _"There's nothing to be afraid of_,_"he was supposed to say. _But there is. There really, really is. _

_Ring. Ring. _The sound jars on John's nerves, though they're already completely shot. "It's in here," he says. His voice is as quiet and ragged as his breathing. "It's in here with me."

What he doesn't say - what he can't say - is that so are the unblinking, brown eyes of the teenage insurgent boy with the grenade he had been forced to shoot his first week in Afghanistan; a never-ending stream of fire flowing out from the blackened frame of his overturned Jeep; and the barrel of an assault rifle pointed a few inches to the left of his heart.

A pause. "Where are you?" Sherlock's voice is crisp on the other end of the line. His tone is not comforting, yet John takes comfort from it.

"Get me out, Sherlock." How many times had he repeated such words under his breath to a seemingly uncaring higher power? _ Oh, quite similar all around then. _"You've got to get me out."

He mumbles something about where he is, and suddenly all the shadows are moving closer. He feels himself being pulled deeper and deeper into the darkness, but Sherlock's voice summons him back. "John? John?" His business-like tone is cracked now, and John can hear concern seeping through.

"Now, Sherlock," he pleads quietly, unsure how much more of this his mind can take. "Please." _Please put that mutant brain of yours into overdrive. Please come find me. Please, God, let me live. _

Sherlock seems to sense the request implicit in his plea. "It's all right; I'll find you," he says, "keep talking."

"I can't, it'll hear me." _If it hasn't already. _

"Keep talking," Sherlock insists. "What are you seeing, John? What can you see?"

_The face of a boy I killed. The face of the man who nearly killed me. Is that what you want to hear, Sherlock? _"I don't know, I don't know," John lies, desperate to shift Sherlock's focus, "but I can hear it. Did you hear that?"

"Stay calm," Sherlock insists. _Way too bloody late for that. _"Can you see it?"

"No, I..." And suddenly, one terrifying second later, he can, as the phantoms of the past are overshadowed by the one haunting his present. It passes in front of the cage, casting a huge shadow over him. Even through the tarp, he can see its murderous red eyes, its glowing fur...

But when the tarp is rolled back and the lights come back on, it's not a monster that he sees, but Sherlock, hand on his shoulder, calling his name.

"Jesus Christ," he shouts, the adrenaline still humming through his veins. _Get out, run, get out while you can. _He pushes past Sherlock, out of the cage, into the lab.

"It was the hound, Sherlock," he exclaims. His legs feel wobbly, like they'll give out at any moment, so he paces, back and forth and back again. "It was here. I swear it, Sherlock. It must..."

He's rambling now. He knows he's rambling, but he's terrified if he stops talking for even a second, the scream that's been welling up inside him for the past twenty minutes will take the opportunity to escape.

"Did...did...did you see it? You must have!" A quick glance around the room reveals no hound, and no ghosts, but that doesn't even slow the deluge of visions bombarding him still.

"It's all right," Sherlock says calmly, eyes following John's frantic progress across the room, "It's okay now."

For the first time that night, John says - or rather, screams - exactly what is on his mind. "No, it's _not!_ It's _not_ okay. I saw it!" He stops just short of telling Sherlock exactly what else he saw. "I was wrong."

"Well, let's not jump to conclusions," Sherlock says with that infuriating smile of his, the one that practically shouts, _I know something you don't know_.

John remembers asking, "What?" but after that, everything kind of blurs together. Sherlock deduces something clever about drugs and rabbits and cell phones, not mobiles.

Then there's a frantic call about Henry, they're off and running again, and it's all moving quickly enough that John almost doesn't notice the shaking that won't leave his hands or the terrifying images lurking at the edges of his vision.

It is only when he's back in his own room at the inn, away from the distraction of the chase and the reassurance of Sherlock's presence, that the fear really starts closing in on him. The room, which had seemed small upon check-in, feels positively minuscule now, and he knows from previous experience that the second he closes his eyes, the second he lets his guard down, all the memories will come crashing in.

So despite being more exhausted than he can remember in recent memory, John doesn't sleep. He asks the barkeep for a strong pot of coffee, earning him a strange look for his trouble, and spends the night blogging - about the case, visiting Dartmoor, anything to keep himself awake.

By the time morning rolls around, John is bleary-eyed and bone-tired, but unplagued by night terrors, so he's calling it a win. So when Sherlock actually brings him a cup of coffee entirely of his own volition, John begins to think the day might not actually be so bad. That is, until he really thinks about the sugar. That's when the whole horrible truth hits him in a flash.

"Oh God," he says, hoping in some insane, optimistic part of his brain that it's not true - that even Sherlock isn't capable of being that callous, that cruel. He knows even as the thought first occurs to him that it's a lie. "_You_ locked me in that bloody lab."

"I had to," Sherlock says defensively, not having the decency to look even a little bit ashamed, "It was an experiment."

"An experiment?" _Is that all I am to you? _John wants to shout. _Just another one of your bloody experiments? _

"Ssh," Sherlock says, glancing vaguely at the other people around them.

"I was terrified, Sherlock! I was scared to death." John isn't sure why he's trying to explain - if Sherlock cared about that, cared about _him_, he wouldn't have put him through the ordeal in the first place.

Sherlock explains it all in his normally superior manner - the usual rubbish about average minds and leaky pipes and sugar. John barely listens. He can't believe he was such an idiot to believe that he was different from the rest - that Sherlock actually understood what the hell it meant to be his friend. That one day, he might even understand...no, definitely no point in thinking about that now.

John remains silent for the whole ride home, though he can feel Sherlock's eyes boring a hole in the side of his head. He purposefully trains his gaze trained on the bleak, Dartmoor countryside passing by outside and keeps it there until they roll up to the curb beside 221b.

He does not wait for Sherlock to park the car properly nor does he respond or even slow down when his flatmate calls after him impatiently. After being drugged, terrified, manipulated, and utterly sleep-deprived, all he wants is the comfort of his own room and his own bed. John knows the nightmares will come, probably worse than before, but right now he's feeling too beat down to care.


	2. Chapter 2

According to the clock on Sherlock's bedside, it was 4:03 A.M. exactly when the screaming started. His eyes flew open, though otherwise he remained motionless, as his mind scanned the known particulars. _Intruder? Potentially. Weapon? Advisable._ _ Harpoon? Too hard to maneuver. Revolver? Satisfactory. _

Sherlock swung swiftly out of bed, absently throwing on the dressing gown he had slung over the desk chair, retrieved the gun from his desk drawer, and padded silently into the hallway.

He could hear the screams more clearly now, and it took only a few seconds for Sherlock to realize that they were coming from the second floor. _ Oh God, John. _

He took the stairs two at a time, ignoring the small voice in his head that pointed out this was, in fact, more likely to alert any potential intruder to his presence, and burst into John's room with all carefully planned thoughts of tactics utterly forgotten.

The room looked like a bomb had gone off somewhere nearby. John's sheets, pillows, and blankets were strewn everywhere; the desk chair had been overturned and moved halfway across the floor; and the painting opposite the bed was nearly falling off the wall, most probably, Sherlock deduced, from having been struck by one of the pillows.

And to Sherlock's horror, there, curled up in the corner of the room, clutching a pillow to his chest and screaming his throat raw, was John.

"John, what's happened?" Sherlock demanded urgently, depositing the revolver on the desk before kneeling beside his flatmate and scanning him thoroughly for any outward sign of injury. "Who did this to you? Who hurt you, John?"

John's screams stopped abruptly as he turned his head, clearly with some effort, so they were face to face. Sherlock took in the sheen of sweat covering John's face and the haunted, angry look in his bloodshot eyes with no small dismay, which was nothing compared to the way he felt after the other man finally spoke.

John let out a ragged, breathless laugh as he said, "You know, for supposedly having the world's greatest detective mind, you really can be phenomenally thick sometimes." He leaned in closer before whispering, "You want to know who hurt me, Sherlock? You did."

Sherlock ignored the strange, clutching sensation in the pit of his stomach as he shifted his focus to figuring out which of the many supposedly inconsiderate things he always seemed to be doing could have gotten John this upset. It did not take him long. "John," he said placatingly, "It was just an experiment, conducted in perfect, laboratory conditions. You were never in any real danger."

"Oh, thank you, Sherlock," John said, letting out another slightly hysterical laugh that was utterly devoid of humor, "I am so glad that all you made me face were the most terrifying moments of my entire life, replayed in dazzling technicolor and surround sound thanks to a sadistic drug and an even more sadistic egomaniac without an off switch."

The strange, clutching sensation only intensified as Sherlock pieced together the implications of what John was saying. "Mycroft said you didn't have PTSD," he said, doubt creeping into his voice for the first time.

"Oh, well, Mycroft said it, so it must be true," John shot back caustically, "What do I know, I'm just the one seeing dead people!" The sarcasm pervading John's voice wasn't the gentle, bantering variety that Sherlock had come to rely upon. No, this was darker and angrier, embittered even.

Seeing John like that, his John, had been bad enough, but finding out that he was the one who had caused it made Sherlock feel cold all over.

"John, I..." Sherlock began, but he trailed off. He realized to his utter horror that his mind had failed him - for the first time in a long time, Sherlock Holmes had no idea what to say.

"You don't know, Sherlock," John said, the temporary steadiness his anger had given him slipping away in an instant as he slumped against the wall once more, a single tear running silently down his cheek. "You don't know what it was like for me in there."

"Tell me," Sherlock said, adding softly when John shot him a disbelieving look, "I...I just want to know how to help you."

John closed his eyes and drew his knees in close to his chest as the tremors running through his body grew more severe. "It was like I was trapped there all over again," he said finally, his voice breaking as more tears spilled from his eyes.

_Clammy skin, shallow breathing, recurring tremors_, Sherlock catalogued silently. _Definitely in shock_. In a move indicative of his level of desperation, Sherlock did the only thing he could think of to alleviate the symptoms - he grabbed the nearest blanket and wrapped it carefully around John's shoulders.

John said nothing, but shot Sherlock a grateful look as he pulled the blanket tightly around his torso before continuing, "Everything feels like it's happening at once - car bombs, insurgents with grenades, patients slipping away with their blood still wet on my hands. And no matter what I do, I can't get it to stop, Sherlock, I just...I can't..."

Sherlock noted with alarm that not only had the shaking spread to all of John's extremities, despite the best efforts of the shock blanket, but the time between his inhalations had shortened from an inadequate two seconds to a frightening one second.

"Breathe, John," Sherlock said, slightly panicked, "You have to breathe."

After calculating the chances of John sustaining brain damage without further intake of oxygen at a slight, but significant 2.7%, Sherlock concluded that some more drastic action on his part had become necessary.

He pressed a hand to John's shoulder experimentally and was gratified to note that his flatmate's - his _friend's_, a small voice in his head corrected - breathing slowed slightly.

Committed to testing his hypothesis further, Sherlock began to move the hand already resting on the soft fabric of the blanket in small circles and gradually placed the other on John's opposite shoulder.

"It's all right, John," he said patiently, reasonably certain that was the correct thing to say at this juncture, "You're safe now. I won't let anything hurt you."

When Sherlock felt a shudder run through John's body, he silently cursed himself for having clearly made some sort of misstep in the formula. Consequently, it took him completely by surprise when instead of retreating further into the corner, John launched himself, blanket and all, into Sherlock's arms.

Sherlock was further stunned to discover that his more than formidable mental processes seemed completely stalled when it came to what to do upon having his friend curled around him like he was some sort of teddy bear.

"I'm scared, Sherlock," John whispered, his head resting on Sherlock's shoulder. "I feel like I don't know what's real anymore. Like I'm going mad."

"Nonsense, John," Sherlock said fiercely, running his hands over John's back - just to make sure the blanket was properly situated, of course - as he continued, "Of the hundreds of people I have met stumbling blindly around this city, you are one of the only ones, the _only_ _ones_, John, sane enough to see what's actually happening out there. You are one of the sanest people I know, John Watson, and I don't want you to doubt it for an instant."

John said nothing, but shifted so his head was buried in the crook of Sherlock's neck, with one of his hands clutching desperately at the soft fabric of his dressing gown. To Sherlock's distress, he began to weep again, great jagged sobs that radiated through Sherlock's torso.

In an attempt to contain any possible damage, Sherlock methodically applied compression, holding John in a vise-like grip until he grew silent once again, the violent shaking wracking his form having diminished to a light tremor.

John murmured something into his neck which Sherlock was seventy-five percent sure amounted to, "So tired, Sherlock," before slumping bonelessly against him.

Calculating the odds that he would be spending a very uncomfortable night sitting cross-legged on the floor unless they moved immediately at over eighty percent, Sherlock got to his feet as deftly as he could manage considering he had a hundred and ninety pounds of army doctor clinging to him like a life preserver, and allowed both of them to fall backward onto the soft duvet still mostly covering John's bed.

He couldn't in good conscience leave John like this, Sherlock reasoned. Though he seemed peaceful now, there was no telling if he would wake again, panicked and disoriented, and cause himself some serious injury.

With this in mind, he repositioned their bodies so they were both resting under the duvet, with John's head still nestled in the crook of his neck, his breath warm and reassuring against Sherlock's collarbone.

After reaching carefully over to switch off the lamp on John's bedside table, Sherlock leaned back against the cool sheets and let himself exhale for the first time in half an hour.

_John is fine_, he told himself. _Everything is fine. _"Everything is fine," he whispered again, this time aloud, in case it would aid John's condition to hear it. As if in unconscious reply, John shifted a little in his sleep and tightened his grip on Sherlock.

In case this small motion meant John was in need of further reassurance, Sherlock responded by holding him tighter as well and even allowed his hand to drift up and tangle itself in John's hair.

"I..." he began to murmur, struck with a sudden, strange feeling that there was more that needed saying, "I'm sorry John. I hurt you. I...I was wrong."

"Mmm, can I have a recording of that please?" John mumbled sleepily into his neck. "Want it for my records."

The corners of Sherlock's mouth quirked up, making him grateful John wasn't in a position to see. _Yes, _he thought, relieved, _everything is going to be just fine. _


End file.
